Kittens
by Charlie's Rat
Summary: Naruto feels crushed. Hinata went on a solo mission two weeks ago and now she's in the hospital and severely brain damaged. She can't remember anything. Except for the fact that Naruto reminds her of kittens. Sakura thinks that Naruto could help Hinata recover. NaruHina therapy, empowered women, feels!Naruto trippy!Hinata
1. Questions

**Kittens  
**_Naruto feels crushed. Hinata went on a solo mission two weeks ago and now she's in the hospital and severely brain damaged.  
She can't remember anything. Except for the fact that Naruto reminds her of kittens. Sakura thinks that Naruto could help Hinata recover.  
NaruHina therapy. _

* * *

** + AU-ish.** Just think of it as a world where Sasuke never joined Orichimaru, no Madara or Akatsuki either.  
+ Hinata is twenty-two, Naruto twenty-one. Hinata is a very good tracker, and is a tokubetsu jonin.  
+ Hinata is someone who Naruto is secretly a bit fond of. Hinata's interest for Naruto will be explained as the story goes on.  
** + Some of this will be told from Hinata's view, so if anything is beyond mindfuck confusing, it's **  
**because Hinata is suffering from severe brain damage so everything is whacked up in her head. **

* * *

**Chapter 1 : Questions  
( Hinata ) **  
_She can't remember anything, only gets flashes of trees and leaves and somebody turning around to look at her in slow motion.  
The painful thing is that she can't remember her own name.  
_**please listen to this song :) **www()youtube()com/watch?v=ukLJ84jEofE

* * *

_The cover the tree provides is ideal — thick fat leaves a rich green colour, blooming in the sun. Summer is always the best season to hunt in — low perspiration, good foliage to hide in, tracks easy to find in the fresh earth, little darkness for the target to escape in, the wild food that grows in case she runs out of supplies, the confusing plethora of scents to mask herself in as she creeps closer to her target-_

_She's always been good at smelling, sniffing out the differences in the air and being able to confirm it with her sharp eyes._

_She's about to let the knife in her hand, aimed at the back of the knee of her target /prey/, fly and imbed itself in warm flesh, where it would sink into tired muscles and the tendons will fly off and snap like rubber bands, but she feels a tingle of warning flash up her spine. She hesitates._

_The target turns slowly, sunlight dappled through swaying trees rippling over his back and_

_the wind direction has changed. That's important._

_Why is that important? She's good at smelling._

_What's she doing ag— ?_

* * *

Something hurts. It's unpleasant.

Why does it hurt?

The leaves are dancing and someone in a white kimono is walking past her and smiles and waves at her. The sky is bright and it feels like a big blue eye is blinking at her. It starts singing songs to her but she can't understand anything because the ground is swallowing her up and it feels like she's somersaulting through time and space and millions of galaxies until stars explode behind her eyelids and she starts singing that song too and there are shutter images, white flashes of explosions and cloth and _things are shutting down_, going dark and very painful, the somersaults are making her sick and now she's lying on the ground in puddles of leaves and stardust —

* * *

She wakes up and it feels like her body is made of cotton, limbs kitten weak and eyesight fuzzy. She blinks rapidly, wants to rub at her eyes with her knuckles but her arms don't want to — they're on vacation and so are her knees, but at least her toes wriggle and say hello to her.

There are these warm white things covering her body and there are some walls and a window and a shadowy ghost near her. Something tells her that she's lying in bed.

There's another creature near her and it looks like it tastes like bubblegum. She doesn't know why but she's convinced that it wants to annoy her.

Her nose itches. She wants to scratch it.

"Hey Hinata, do you know where you are?" The bubblegum creature asks her.

At first she feels annoyed because the thing is talking so slowly that it feels like the thing is trying to provoke her, but then she thinks about the thing's question and realises that she doesn't really know.

She tries figuring it out.

She's laying on a bed.

"My bedroom?" she rasps.

Why does her throat hurt? The thing stops her from scratching her nose. Puts her arm back on the bed. She didn't even realise that her arms had come back from their holiday.

The thing shakes its head. "We're in a hospital Hinata." Then, "Do you remember anything?"

She thinks about it. Remembers cotton fuzz and her mind like water through a civ. There are green leaves, she's good at—

"Smelling."

The ghost — she doesn't remember it being there. It laughs, coughs almost, like it's raspy like her.

"I'm good at smelling things."

The bubblegum thing tilts its head. Is it smiling? It looks at the ghost shadow, says something faster than she can really catch; "— have to ask Kiba or Shino later ..."

She wants to scratch her nose.

"Why does my nose hurt?" she asks, and the bubblegum thing — it looks pink — twitches like it's uncomfortable. The pink thing doesn't answer and the ghost shifts too. "What are you?" she asks instead.

The pink thing seems surprised. "What do you think I am?" The thing's voice quivers slightly. The ghost hovers. She tries remembering, really tries to think up of something that is like the creature in front of her but all that she can think of is a blank haze and water running, ships trapped in a bottle and a sugary cotton that is rosy red.

"Pink?" she says, then nods her head in conviction. "Bubblegum thing."

"What do you think my name is?" it asks.

"I don't know. Pinky?"

The ghost laughs, but it's a bit cut off, like a whimper. She can remember a whimper from something but she doesn't know from where. Her head is too full of dandy fluff and cotton, finds it difficult to sift through to get the knowledge.

Pinky points to the ghost. "Who do you think that is?" She turns her head slightly, feels a sudden stab of pain that has her wincing, wanting to clutch her head but Pinky stops her before she can reach up. "Don't move too much Hinata, or you'll hurt yourself even more." Pinky warns.

The ghost is looking at her. _Big blue eye in the sky_. "Blue eye," she says, tries looking at the ghost better, but it doesn't seem to gain a real form like Pinky does. Maybe she should give it a name? "I can't see it so well."

"You _can't_?" There's something like disbelief in Pinky's voice. She shakes her head, _no_.

"Who do you think that is?" Pinky asks again.

The ghost moves closer, "A ghost, but I can't really see — oh."

The ghost's formless grey shape moves closer, and now she can see _blue eye_s and sunlight on its head and kitten whiskers, she mewls because the ghost suddenly has a name, but also because it's wearing orange and also black and she's never been so happy to see a rainbow of colours before. Something associates the orange colour with happiness and warmth, unlike Pinky, where she thinks of irritation.

"Orange? Kitten?"

The ghost looks concerned, and draws a little closer so that it ends up near her face. The ghost comes into better focus.

"Blue ey— Naruto?"

Naruto gasps, blue eyes twinkling like water, glittering prettily. He looks like he wants to cry, which she thinks is weird. She still wonders why they're all in her bedroom and why her nose and head and throat hurt.

Pinky moves over to Naruto's side. "You remember Naruto?"

Naruto seems to tremble, like a cord struck, vibrating his feelings all through the room. His hands, shaking slightly, rest on her bed and grip the cloths near her arm. She wants him to hold her hand but she thinks that Pinky won't let her.

"You recognise me?" he says, awe in his voice, cord struck within him again. It sounds like a little tinkling bell.

She wants to nod, but doesn't because she doesn't want to feel the pain again. "Yes." She says. She remembers orange flashes, sunlit days, smiles coming easy like breathing, a field full of green grass and some wooden poles. "You said that I was weird."

Naruto flinches. He looks like he doesn't know whether to laugh or cry.

Pinky turns its head to look at Naruto as if he was being weird himself. Pinky then turns back to her, and now she can make out some other things because Pinky is standing closer now. Pink, red, something green that is probably Pinky's eyes. She can see Pinky now, but it's all fuzzy, like all she needs is to squint her eyes some more and then the puzzle pieces will connect and she'll be able to really see what's there.

"Do you know who I am now?" Pinky asks next to Naruto.

"No. Pink."

Pinky continues asking questions. As she looks, butterflies start fluttering near her toes and there's a leaf stuck in Naruto's hair and Pinky seems to zoom in and out of focus.

"Do you remember where you are?"

No. Make a guess.

"My bedroom. Why?"

"You're in hospital. You were hurt." Naruto looks pained as Pinky says that. It confuses her.

Suddenly Naruto starts, interrupts Pinky's questions. Asks his own.

"What's your name?"

_Oh. _

In the background, fuzzy and dampened, Pinky is punishing Naruto for interrupting it, saying stuff like _"Jesus Naruto don't interrupt me, _I _ask the questions." "Well _sorry_ Sakura but she's high as a fucking kite and you're still asking her questions you've already asked!" "Do _you_ want to ask her next why she's good at smelling things then?"_ But all of that is said too fast, too complicated for her to pick up and tiredly decipher. All she can think about is _what is your name_ and finding no answer to that question.

She doesn't know who she is, and that feels like a crushing weight over her chest, feels a block form in her throat and her eyes hurt. The butterfly by her toes bursts and vanishes and the leaf in Naruto's hair is gone too and she's imagining something else now. It feels different, less heavy in a way. Light and quick and sharp. Metallic. The deft way she holds the sharpness in one hand and looks as somebody turns around to look at fat green leaves, feels a chocking sensation and the fleeting images of someone skipping along her in a white dress, sings a song — it hurts.

Her face feels wet. She paws at her face before Pinky can stop her. Realises that she's hiccupping. Naruto looks shocked, _blue eye_s wide, mouth gaping at her. Pinky is equally shocked, but its features are still blocked.

"I— … I don't know."

Her face burns and talking hurts with the block over her chest and in her throat.

"I don't know who I am."

* * *

**Please don't expect me to update this quickly, as I've got exams at the moment and this is a form of sinful, self-harming procrastination.  
**I was watching an episode of _24 Hours in A&E _(Accident & Emergency) when this young girl arrived. She'd fallen asleep at her desk during class and when the teacher woke her up she was really confused and was hallucinating. The nurse at the hospital asked her where she was and she said she was in her bedroom. She was seriously trippy. That was sort of my inspiration for writing a trippy brain damaged NaruHina with memory loss. xP

Anyway, **you can encourage me by reviewing! ;P **


	2. Damage Report

**KITTENS**

* * *

**Chapter 2 : Damage Report  
****( Naruto )  
**_A little more than two weeks ago Hinata had told him over a steaming plate of spaghetti Bolognese that she'd been asked by Hokage-sama to go on a mission. She'd be gone for a while, she'd said. "Ah, you'll be alright." He'd said, clapped his hand on her shoulder for good measure. _  
**song : ** www()youtube()com/watch?v=RzNvc4z-cWQ

* * *

They'd grown closer over the last few years, so close that he could ask her for a meal together at Ichiraku's after some training and she could smirk and laugh softly at him while he eats his noodles in spectacular fashion. There's a certain fondness that has grown in his chest over the past few years, a sort of begrudging acceptance of Hinata that enabled him to overlook her childhood stutter and her weirdness, grew warm and kindled the feelings that grew whenever he saw her smile when he was near. He's mellowed out— matured, thought more before he acted, stopped yelling because he realised there was no need to anymore— he had friends now, people who listened to him.

Hinata, on the opposite end, had shed that rosy meek behaviour of hers soon after she became a chunin and realised that acting shy was not going to get people to take her seriously. Of course, Hinata has always been more, … _subdued_, than Naruto, was still a bit of a quiet mystery, but she'd grown a rather formidable backbone over the years. Naruto's seen her argue with her younger sister Hanabi before, and he'd been surprised to find that she could be ruthless when she wanted to be.

Hinata doesn't hold back. It's something that appealed to him, drew him to her.

* * *

A little more than two weeks ago Hinata had told him over a steaming plate of spaghetti bolognese— they were having dinner in her apartment. She'd moved out of the Hyuuga compound a little more than four years ago now— that she'd been asked by Hokage-sama to go on a mission. She'd be gone for a while, she'd said.

Track and eliminate.

A-rank.

It'd been a quiet meal, a bit tense as both of them don't know whether her absence will mean anything to him. He doesn't know if her words have a deeper meaning to them. Of course, they'd told each other once or twice if they would be gone for a while, but— it hadn't felt like that.

He remembers Hinata's strength in that field, how she could tell where he was with one critical once over of her surroundings with her sharp eyes. How her sense of smell, strongly defined thanks to Kiba's help, enables her to trace scents that others don't immediately pick up on.

"Ah, you'll be alright." He'd said, clapped his hand on her shoulder. She'd smiled back, faintly.

"You're the best at this anyway, the Hokage was right to choose you!"

Hinata had laughed at his compliment, and the easy look on her face made him clench the fork in his hand tighter, made him look at his plate of food and thank her for the meal, so as to hide his heated cheeks.

* * *

Ten days later Sakura interrupts his mission, emotions on her face that make him uncomfortable, sets something on edge, nerves tingling. She tells him that his mission has been cancelled— he doesn't mind so much, it'd been a B-rank and easy; guard duty. There's an immediate replacement that came with Sakura, so Naruto doesn't hesitate to follow her as she starts running back to the village. She ignores him when he asks her what's going on.

He's rarely seen her this agitated before, and he's shocked to see her face when he catches up with her so he can speak to her properly. She looks ready to burst at the seams.

Immediately, Naruto wonders if Sasuke has been hurt.

If Sakura had been able to collect Naruto's sorry ass and interrupt his mission then she'd have had to have permission from the Hokage. It must be really bad, whatever has happened.

Naruto's heart sinks down to his stomach when Sakura leads him to the hospital. He'd ruled out an attack, or that the Hokage may have had an urgent job to do (Sakura was perfectly capable of dealing with the Hokage's shit better than anyone else). So it had to be the last option; someone's hurt.

Naruto knows that death is a common occurrence that comes with the career that he and so many people he knows have taken, that injury is inevitable over time. He'd been in the hospital a fair few times as well, knows how the world goes round that way. It doesn't stop him from wanting death not to happen, make him want to deny the fact that he or someone close to him will die one day in the line of duty.

Sakura pushes open the hospital doors, and together they walk into the lobby. "Okay, who is it?" he says, holds her elbow so that she can't just pretend that whatever is happening, isn't happening.

"Hinata." Sakura says, and Naruto sees anger in Sakura's eyes as she says it. Regret. Distaste that yet another one of them has landed in the hospital.

Naruto thinks that the thing he and Hinata have going on— whatever the fuck that is. Are they dating? Fuck if he knows— must be obvious because Sakura's treating him like a damn flower when it comes to telling him who's so badly injured that the Hokage pulled him out of his mission, but at the same time the floor seems to be dropping away from him.

"She went down during her mission." Sakura says. In turn, she squeezes Naruto's elbow to ground him. "It's unclear what happened."

The words don't want to form, it's torture, but he forces them around the raw block lodged in his throat because he needs to know. "Dea— ?"

"No. Alive."

"Thank God."

Naruto sighs, clutches his head, feels just that bit more relieved, feels the tension gnawing inside him ease up that little bit at the news. Cynically, he feels like laughing, even if he doesn't want to.

Sakura motions at him. "Come on, I'll show you where Kiba and Shino are. Neji's on his way." She leads him down a corridor away from the lobby and past some navigational signs. Naruto refuses to look at the plaque on the side of the wall's panelling, the one that ominously spells out the word _'Morgue'_, arrow pointing to a door that leads to the underground levels.

"She's in RESUS at the moment, but she'll have to be moved to get some CT scans soon." Sakura says.

Nowadays Naruto doesn't understand anything Sakura says when she's talking about medical subjects, but having the experience of being in RESUS, short medic slang for _'resuscitation'_, before, he knows that Hinata is in the _Accidents & Emergencies_ section of the hospital.

He doesn't bother ask her how she found out that Hinata was injured since it would be retarded to ask. Sakura works at the hospital. It's most likely that Sakura found out Hinata was hurt when Hinata's bleeding body was dumped on the gatch bed in front of her nose. "Who found her?" he asks.

They stop in front of a set of double doors. Sakura swipes a card somewhere and then they're opening to let them through.

"Kiba,"

They pass through the double doors, continue walking. He holds back his surprise— he'd thought that someone had just happened to find her. He thought that Hinata was on a solo mission. Had he not heard correctly?

They pass a plaque telling them that _Accidents & Emergencies_ is straight ahead, and instead of heading that way Naruto follows Saukra in the direction the plaque _Relatives Room_ points to.

Upon glimpsing his confused face, Sakura elaborates. "Kiba found her first— Team 8 communicate via Shino's bugs. Shino says that he got an _S.O.S._ from her."

Oh. That explains a lot. (He knows that they did it when they were genin, —the bug communication tactic— but he's a bit surprised that they still do it even though they're not officially a team anymore). Well, all the more reason to keep doing it, if its managed to save Hinata.

The sounds of hustle and bustle that had quieted down during their walk from the lobby now return, along with a sense of urgency.

Naruto can smell blood, pronounced thickly in the air. It's a cutting metallic scent that he learnt to identify when he was twelve, and the knowledge has stayed with him since. It had once been a prominent fragrance during his stay in the hospital when he'd fractured his eye socket.

The door to the relatives' room is open, and Naruto catches a glimpse of a coffee machine and two low sofas and a couple of chairs before his eyes magnetically glue themselves to Hinata's former teammates.

Sakura and Naruto catch the Team 8 members in an obviously private moment. Naruto freezes near the doorway.

Kiba's back is turned to them, and Naruto can see the stress in his body, see the stiff muscles under the line of his shoulders, the tense tick in his jaw. His face is hidden in the collar of Shino's pale forest coloured jacket, hands gripping his jacket sleeves, bunching the fabric in his fists. Shino lets him, though no one can see Shino's face properly because of his sunglasses, Naruto can feel his emotions rolling off of him. Akamaru isn't there because the dog is an obvious breech to sanitisation and hygiene rules, but if he was Naruto could imagine the giant hound whining, nose pressed into someone's hand. Shino's got one hand on top of Kiba's head, fingers rubbing brown spiky hair. Shino must have a good technique, because Kiba lets out a long sigh, deflating slightly.

"She's going to be alright Kiba, believe in her." Shino says it quietly, voice firm.

"_Yeah_, but, … "

Naruto feels horrible. He feels like he's just witnessed something he shouldn't have seen. Private. Unprotected. Emotional. _Vulnerable_.

_"She's going to be alright Kiba, believe in her."_

He hides himself by taking a step aside to block his presence with wall when Kiba starts disentangling himself from Shino. He knows that if he were in their situation he'd also want privacy. He can respect that; Hinata is hurt, after all.

Sakura coughs in the doorway and knocks her knuckles against the open door to notify her presence. Naruto can't see their reaction, but there's an awkward grunt from Kiba.

"I've told Naruto," Sakura announces, and he takes that as her queue for him to walk in and act like he never saw what had just happened.

There aren't any words to say, so he meets their eyes and nods at each one as a way of greeting. Kiba's eyes look red around the edges and Shino's mouth is set in a thin line.

Just then Neji bursts through the door, closely followed by Shizune. Neji's hair looks a bit untamed, as if he'd run full pelt from wherever he was to get to the hospital. His eyes are a bit too fidgety, and he's constantly shifting, adjusting his footing. Naruto's never seen Neji, usually calm and collected like a sharp blade, like this before.

Sakura takes one look at Neji, then at the group in total. Shizune hands Sakura a notepad with furious black scribbles on it, illegible as all doctors' handwriting is, and leaves without a single word escaping her lips. Next, Sakura ushers them all to the sofas; Shino and Kiba sit together, and Naruto is sat on the other sofa on his own as Neji had decided to drag a chair over instead. He glimpses a formal looking slip of paper in a clearer font in the mess of notes in Sakura's hand. He manages to read the words _'X-Ray computed tomography' _before the notepad moves out of his vision.

The words that every shinobi come to dread, come to anticipate with mixed emotions after every health check, after every visit and trip to the hospital, after every mission, come from Sakura's mouth, hard and clear. "Damage report." She says. Neji visibly stiffens.

Naruto feels like he can hardly breathe during the pause Sakura leaves. He refuses to look to his right, look at Kiba and Shino on the other sofa, think what it must be like for them. What's going through their heads, what they must be feeling.

"Broken nose. I had to set it myself." Sakura says, but leaves no time for them to process that as she plows through to the next injury. Sakura flips a paper, and Naruto glimpses the back of the paper he'd spotted earlier again.

"Oh." Sakura's face falls a little. She pauses, eyes flying over the information. Briefly, her eyes meet Naruto's. His gut twists itself into a pretzel and back.

"CT scans show major cranial trauma. Blood clots. Major haemorrhaging. Clean break in the _glabella_ and _columella_. Superficial injuries to the _nasion_ area. Bruised _platysma_."

The list seems to go on and on, and with each report Naruto's wish that Sakura would stop talking grows stronger. He risks a glance at Team 8. Kiba's bent forward, elbows on knees and face hidden in his hands. Shino, as ever, seems impassive, except for the fact that the air seems to quiver around him and that his hands are balled into tight fists on his knees just like Naruto's.

Sakura briefly looks up from the damage report. Out of all of the men gathered in the room, Neji seems to be the only one with a vague idea of what she's saying.

"She's broken some bones in the area around and in her nose, as well as the part that connects to her skull. She's also hurt one of the muscles in her neck." She says, most likely feeling like a bit of a douche, which Naruto knows, she can sometimes be. Naturally, most of the time it's Sasuke that's the major douche-asshole.

Sakura resumes.

"Superficial injuries to both hands, clean break in left wrist. Fractured left eye socket."

Sakura glances up from the report to Naruto. Last year he'd also fractured his eye socket and had ended up in RESUS with Sakura telling him he was an asshat for trying to pull off a stunt like that, and with Sasuke sending him a bouquet of yellow bush daisies, the sarcastic bastard. It hadn't been a serious fracture, a _supraorbital notch_, as Sakura had called it. It had left a scar though, as he had needed stitches. He'd walked about the place for weeks after his release from the hospital feeling like an idiot, as the cut had sliced some of his eyebrow away, leaving it looking like a mock version of Kakashi's scarred eyebrow. Oh well, Chouji and Lee had said that it looked cool, so that made him feel better about it.

"Fracture situated near the frontal process of the zygomatic bone and also near the orbital surface of the eye socket. Class 3 Haemorrhage."

Shino breathes in sharply. Naruto can't feel his feet— he's gripping his knees too tightly. They wait with baited breath for the final report that will conclude Hinata's situation. If she'll live or not. Make a full recovery.

Hinata is his friend. She's close to him, not really like Sasuke and Sakura and Kakashi are, but she's damn near close to it. Sure, Chouji's been hospitalised before, but it was clear that he was going to make a full recovery in no time. That's not the case with Hinata. He really doesn't want this to be the time he learns to cope with the loss of a friend, have the fact that every single one of them could die at the drop of a hat shoved in his face.

Sakura drops the bomb:

"Synopsis so far; level 4 brain damage. Full recovery undeterminable for the foreseeable future."

Naruto's vision flashes a startlingly clear red while he feels the world drop away from his feet.

* * *

**I'm not going to be one of those douchebags that hits their readers with the medical encyclopaedia, and then leave them to figure out what the hell I wrote. **I admit it, I did use Wiki, but only because I wanted Sakura to sound smart— medical doctor smart— without pulling words out of my ass. I tried lessening the blow of complicated words by getting Sakura to simplify it for Naruto, but I feel that you guys should also have the opportunity to know what she's talking about.

* * *

**Here is a link to the photos & websites I used for Hinata's medical report: REPLACE "()" WITH "."  
Don't worry if some seem impossible to type over, I'll put the links on my profile.  
**

* * *

**○ What does a **_**CT scan**_** mean?  
** — _en()wikipedia()org/wiki/X-ray_computed_tomography#Head_  
Basically it's a medical term for an X-ray. It's usually used to detect anything wrong in the body, but it also does really detailed brain and head scans.

**○ What the fuck is a **_**glabella**_**? And a **_**columella**_**?  
** — _www()ouranatomypictures()com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/Nose-Anatomy-Pictures-186()jpg_  
They're parts of the nose. The glabella is the space directly between your eyes, right near the starting curve of your nose.

**○ The fuck's a **_**platysma**_**, bro?  
** — _upload()wikimedia()org/wikipedia/commons/f/fb/Platysma()png_  
It's the muscles near your neck. Sometimes you see old grannies and their necks are all veiny and stuff— that's the platysma.  
Lookie here: — _www()stayingwrinklefree()com/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/Platysma-Muscle()jpg_

**○ What's **_**Haemorrhage**_** mean? **_**"Class 3 Haemorrhaging"**_**?  
** — _en()wikipedia()org/wiki/Bleeding_  
Basically it's the fancy word for "bleeding". I know, why make it more difficult? I guess that doctors just want to confuse the shit out of normal people.

○ "_**Level 4 brain damage**_**"?  
** — _en()wikipedia()org/wiki/Traumatic_brain_injury#Severity_  
This shows you a table, depicting how bad brain damage can be on a scale from 3 to 15. The lower the number goes the worse the brain damage is. The table also shows you how long the person would be in a coma. I put Hinata at #4 because the thing didn't go lower than 3.  
— _en()wikipedia()org/wiki/Glasgow_Coma_Scale#Elements_of_the_scale _  
The Glasgow Coma Scale shows the scale and severity of a coma. I'd put Hinata at #2, except that her eyes don't open.

**○ What's up with all this broken eye socket shit? That's just plain nasty, man.  
** **— **_www()aboutcancer()com/skull1()gif**  
**_Man, reading all of the stuff on that hurt my head. The font is fucking tiny and all the words are really weird too. But yeah, last year my APP English teacher rode to school on his bicycle and some fucker hit him with their car. It was really serious. Like, he'd broken his collar bone, his shoulder, his jaw and cheekbone, his eye socket, … He had to get a titanium cheekbone and stuff fitted, lost a lot of his hair as well, poor guy. Even now he's not 100% better. Alleeho, Mr. Stenson is made of some hard stuff. He drives to school in his car now.

**Additionally, some extra stuff: **

**○ What do Naruto's eyebrows look like?  
** — _fbcdn-sphotos-f-a()akamailhd()net/hphotos-ak-prn2/p480x480/1157689_532286653514843_1603409447_n()jpg_  
There's this rapper guy in my art class who shaved one eyebrow like that. At first I thought it looked weird— _dude how did you manage to fuck up so badly while shaving?_— but now I think that it's rather badass.

**○ What do the flowers Sasuke sent Naruto look like?  
** — _en()wikipedia()org/wiki/Euryops_pectinatus_  
They're called _Euryops pectinatus_, or yellow bush daisies. They're kinda cute, but I wouldn't give them to someone as a Valentine's present. It's a wild flower.

* * *

**I hope that helped any of you who were confused! :D Please review!  
****Also, totes failed my philosophy exam. Way to go Charlieboy.  
**


	3. Having Problems?

**KITTENS**

* * *

**Chapter 3 : Having Problems?  
( Naruto )  
**_Hinata is strong, independent, skilled, and always has a small smile on her face whenever Naruto is near.  
The Hinata that lies in the hospital bed is a shattered shell of a once glorious fighter that he remembers.  
He doesn't know whether he wants to beat the shit out of the wall next to him or curl up in a ball and cry._

**Warning! : **Feels.  
Set straight after _**Damage Report**_. (this story is not chronologically written!)  
**Song : **_To Your Health_ by Keaton Henson  
_"Here's to you, you old wreck,"_

* * *

Four days later Hinata gets released from the surgical ward. Sakura lets Hinata's family and team visit her first, but no matter how much Kiba begs and Shino silently wills for their teammate to wake up, she remains lifeless.

After everyone has left Sakura lets Naruto slip in, and he sits there and cradles her uninjured hand like he could possibly pass his health through their connected hands. There's a very bitter feeling churning in his chest and throat as he looks at her breathe through an oxygen pump and hear her heart beep on the monitor in her room.

* * *

On the fifth day Naruto slips into Hinata's ward again after Ino not so secretly gives him the room number. Sakura is there to meet him at the door and usher him in.

* * *

"How's she doing?" he asks, slipping off his flak jacket and draping it over the back of a chair, which he places next to her bed.

"No change so far." Sakura replies, waves her hand about. "We have to wait for her to wake up."

He looks up at her. "Can only assess her once her vitals change?" he guesses.

Sakura nods.

The two occupants in the room turn to look at the patient laying in the bed, silent as death apart from the heart monitor relaying the thrumming of her pulse at the corner of her bed. Hinata is very pale, skin a sickly grey, flesh looking a tad clammy from the summer heat. Most of her face is covered though, as her nose is set in a special cast and her head has bandages. To boot, she's also got some pretty thick bandages covering her left eye, as well as a single stitch in her upper lip. Her left wrist is free of any cast, only some bandages, which makes Naruto think that Sakura must have healed her broken wrist and healed her fingers too.

Her silken hair that made her so recognisable to Naruto is now spread out on her pillow in greasy strands, knots and kinks in her once beautiful long locks. Her hospital garb is peeking out above the sheets, and one corpse-like arm is resting above the thin covers, IV drip inserted. There's a cooler bag nearby, which Naruto thinks contains the fluids for the next IV bag, as the current one is nearly empty.

His gaze seems locked on her face. That pale, sick face. The single eye not covered in bandages is shut, the black lashes resting. He wants them to twitch — her eyes to open — for her to wake up. Her lips are also paler than usual and he desperately wants her to speak to him. Her cheeks, rosy reds and pinks in her childhood — are now drained of colour and life.

Sakura sets about changing her drip, and Naruto is of half a mind to ask her what she's got Hinata on, but realises that he'd rather not know. Instead, he points to his own lip, inquisitive eyes on his medic ex-teammate.

Sakura sees his line of thought and glances at Hinata's face herself.

"She thrashed and yelled so much when she first arrived that she bit through her lip."

He wished he'd never asked.

* * *

Three days later Neji comes by to his apartment — a dark and shrouded mess, curtains drawn, his room a shambles and a poorly repaired alabaster wall where Naruto had put his fist through it the previous evening. Neji stands there, slightly defeated as he tells a sleeplessly tired Naruto that his cousin had woken up that afternoon — but warned him not to expect _too_ much — she didn't seem aware of anyone and was unresponsive when the medics tried asking her questions. She'd fallen asleep again, but at least she'd broken her coma, which was what Neji was initially there to tell him about.

Naruto invites him in for crappy coffee and noodles, warns him that it is messy in there, but Neji declines and leaves after patting his shoulder and staring into his soul through his eyes.

_Fuck. _

* * *

That night he cries and cries and cries, and the effort he put into repairing the alabaster wall the night before is all useless, as he puts his fist through it again.

Sasuke shows up at one AM with two plastic bags full of booze, and just like that his best friend gets him sufficiently drunk to forget Hinata for the next few hours.

Sasuke even cleans up his living room for him the morning after while Naruto is in the bathroom heaving over a toilet bowl.

The curtains and windows have been pulled open and fresh air circulates in his apartment. Naruto hugs Sasuke and feels touched and a little like crying again.

* * *

On the tenth day after Hinata had, . . . _had _— fuck. He visits her in the afternoon. Sakura, as usual, is there to let him in after Ino sneaks him through the ward. He'd wanted to see her sooner — some part of him didn't — but he didn't want to insult Hinata by showing up hungover after drinking a small lake of sake the night before. Sakura must smell some leftover fragrance on his clothes though, because she wrinkles her nose as soon as he comes in and frowns at him, but doesn't say anything else about it. Maybe it's because he sometimes smells cherry beer on her clothes too. It's usually when Sasuke has done some dumb shit and pushed himself too far for Naruto or Sakura to pull him out of.

"Kiba and Shino visited this morning," Sakura says as he sits down on the chair next to Hinata's bed. It draws his attention to the periwinkle flowers put in a water jug, on one of the nightstands, and another little pot with poppies growing in it. "Kurenai-sensei came yesterday morning, too."

There's a dirty little stab-twinge of guilt that shoots through him, makes him think that if he was a better friend he would have brought her flowers, too. Instead all he's done is punch walls and get drunk. All that he's done is simmer in his apartment with a slow burning rage that he can't direct at anyone, vision sometimes flickering red, other times blurring as he feels his throat constrict and tears well in his eyes that he really, _really_ doesn't want to acknowledge.

"_Oi_, Naruto," Sakura snaps. It has him looking up at her owlishly. He knows that he's had a not so innocent past, but surely Sakura didn't think that he was staring at Hinata inappropriately? Because he wasn't.

Sakura's hand is held out like a flat line, and she swipes it through the air under her eyes. "Cut the crap out before accidents happen."

Oh. His eyes.

They must have turned red at some point.

With a little bit of concentration and a lot of will — right now, Naruto seriously gave zero fucks if his eyes were red, blue, or fucking polka dotted — he felt a cooler sensation spread over his face, and then Sakura grunted her approval.

"Having problems?" Sakura asks from where she's adjusting the blinds by the window, back turned to his back. They sometimes have conversations like this, where neither looks at the other and neither of them are facing each other. Naruto snorts.

"Obviously," The room turns a shade darker, sunlight filtered in slow and soft and easy. "but not as much as her right now."

Hinata remains there, still slightly lifeless, if not for how she breathes on her own now, albeit with difficulty. Since she can't breathe through her nose her mouth has been forced open. Otherwise, she would have been back on the oxygen pump.

The Hinata that lies in the hospital bed is a shattered shell of a once glorious fighter that he remembers. He doesn't know whether he wants to beat the shit out of the wall next to him or curl up in a ball and cry.

"You know," his ex-teammate says from her spot in front of the blinds, voice all airy and soft as china, like she's hinting at something. "the shinobi corporation also offers psychiatric help for those in need of it."

"Don't need it." He replies immediately. Doesn't want it either.

"Well," she says, and she walks closer to him. Her hand rests on his left shoulder and squeezes. The weight and warmth and familiarity of it is soothing to his raw nerves.

"You've always got us if you do need help."

"Thanks," He squeezes that hand. The hand that has slapped and disciplined him and healed him and worn his and Sasuke's blood on it like sleeves. But still there. He closes his eyes and wills it in himself to believe in Hinata like her teammates do.

_"She's going to be alright, believe in her." _

"you're a good friend."

"Anytime, Uzumaki."

* * *

**PS:** Naruto is technically not really allowed to visit Hinata if he is not in her immediate family or is not her teammate. But since he's sort of close to her Sakura and Ino don't mind looking the other way when he visits her. Ino probably thinks that it's cute if it weren't so tragically _The Notebook_ style sad.  
Also, Sasuke and Sakura have come up with this code-hand-signal thing so they can discreetly tell Naruto to calm the fuck down because does he seriously want everyone to know that he's a jinchuuriki? Not many people know that he is a jinchuuriki and there aren't that many excuses that can pardon your eyes suddenly changing colour when you get overly emotional.

* * *

I've just realised that I don't really have a comeback to _"why didn't Sakura just heal all of Hinata's injuries?". _Um, well, because I failed that aspect. Maybe because some things are just gonna have to heal the slow way. Yeah. The slow way.

Also, I'm so glad that nobody jumped to the "Oh Kiba and Shino totally have something going on ifyouknowwhatImean" because I feel like guys should be able to have some sort of bonding/hurt/comfort without everyone thinking "oh they're gay cuddling". Yeah. So thanks BTW _**nothing**_ is going on between Naruto and Sakura.

* * *

**I know that this is totally late, but I'd like you all to know that I passed my schoolyear and am now off to university in Ireland. And. I. Passed. My. Philosophy. Exam! :DD Oisht! **

**PLEASE REVIEW I LOVE YOUR COMMENTS :D**


End file.
